Is this the end?
by The cursed child
Summary: Ziva has been captured by Saleem and it is up to Tony to save her. But their relationship as partners has been destroyed completely, obliterated. What is Ton'y solution?
1. Captured

**A/N I'm rewriting this story because my English has improved a lot and I hate the story, but not the plot. Death ones will follow soon. I hope that you'll enjoy this more than the previous version. I'm going to try and update every week, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to make that deadline. It's probably going to be longer than that one too. I'm guessing ten or eleven chapters. Enjoy! **

A woman was sitting on a chair in a small dark room. The room was damp and hot. The floor was filthy, and rats - dead and alive - were lying on it. The walls were old and cracks covered them.

The four walls were the woman's prison. She'd lost track of time, but time didn't matter anymore. The sun shining through the small window told her the difference between day and night, there was nothing else that separated them, only the light and dark.

The man that frequently opened the door came during both time periods, nothing mattered. Her life was over. There would be no rescue, there would be no escape. She would break eventually and they would kill her. Noone knew where she was and even that was not important.

Heavily armed men guarded numerous steel doors, and even if someone could get past them, there were still weapons against tanks and all air forces that could be send. There was no plan, noone even knew that there should be a plan, because few even knew of the existence of the camp.

She couldn't move. She was tied to the chair and her body didn't want to move. Her whole body hurt. Her face was covered with cuts and bruises, and her legs and hand were bruised and scarred. The woman's blood covered the floor and dripped down the chair legs.

Ziva David had been sitting on that chair for almost three days. The assassin had been captured when she'd decided that she could complete the mission on her own. She wanted to finish what Michael had started. Ziva had taken her place in the Kidon unit and she would end this no matter what. She was still an assassin, and as soon as she untied these ropes, she would kill the bastard, the consequences didn't matter.

She had told Tony once that everyone breaks when tortured, and she was going to soon. She was losing her strength, her will to fight. She hadn't been fed yet, and that was taking its toll.

She got hit again and again. Saleem was not a subtle torturer, he just kept hitting until he was told something. He was losing his patience with her and that was dangerous. He needed to keep his cool and kill her before he lost control and became even more dangerous.

He had asked her a lot of questions, but there was only one that kept coming back. Every couple of minutes she heard the question:

"Tell me everything you know, about NCIS." He shouted it, he whispered it to her, and she answered it.

The question never changed because she never gave the right answer, the answer he wanted so badly.

All she gave away were things like:

"The desks are too small."

"The computers are old."

"The orange color drives me crazy."

And her favorite;

"We never have enough paperclips, especially when I want to kill someone."

As she answered she heard someone talk in a language she didn't know. They were distant, like the voices were miles away. Her head was pounding, and she couldn' help but shut everything out.

He'd left her alone for a few hours today, because he had more important things to do. When Ziva's headache lessened she realised she just hadn't been paying attention.

The voices were merely on the other side of the door. She heared the terrorists talking in English.

The men that had captured and tortured her were talking about the fact she wasn't going to cooperate. They were tired of her answers. They doubted that she even knew what they wanted to know. They were no professionals apparently. If they were, they would have known that she was evading the questions by answering them truthfully, but not the truth they wanted.

She was getting more confident by the minute that she was going to be killed without another punch thrown her way. The pain would stop and she would be able to close her eyes and give in to the darkness.

She wanted it all to end.

She was hungry, thirsty, tired and couldn't bare the pain for much longer. She was going to talk soon, but they wouldn't give her the chance if she was lucky.

Everyone she loved betrayed her or she betrayed them. The endless betrayals had sent her on this path. Her father, her boss, her partner, her boyfriend and her friends no longer cared for her. They'd all worked against her. They had pushed her around. She was a puppet in the hands of others, just like she'd been raised to be.

She had to obey her orders and she shouldn't question them. It was not what she was made for. She had to protect her country and its people, nothing more. That was her duty.

She was suddenly disturbed from her peaceful slumber. The slumber where she rested without closing her eyes. The room would disappear for a while and she could walk on the grass again. That had disappeared. Her mind recognized a gunshot immediately.

She pities the fool that was shot. She'd heard them before. It was simply another prisoner that was executed. The single shot went off and everything would soon turn back to normal.

That was until she heard another, which was followed by even more of them. The camp was under attack. She waited for the door to open. Saleem wouldn't let her escape, he would execute her.

She heard the door open and saw two guards enter. She closed her eyes and waited for the bullet to be fired, but it didn't come.

She opened her eyes and was amazed to see both of them lying on the ground. She wanted to look up to thank her savior, but at that moment she fainted from all the blood loss.

**A/N I hope you enjoyed the revised chapter.**


	2. rescued

**A/N I hope that you enjoy the chapter.**

Tony was moving fast.

He knew that in this place every second was important. Every moment was crucial. There were lives at stake here. He'd found prisoners in other houses and he feared for Ziva. They were beaten until they were no longer recognizable. Their faces were bloody and swollen and they broken multiple bones.

The agent kicked a door in and shot. Everyone in this place was an enemy. He killed them before they could kill him.

All the men he had seen were either dead or dying. Bullets were flying all over the place and casings dropped to the ground one by one. Men fell to the onslaught and he'd seen more bodies than he had in a long time.

These two were no different. They were killers, terrorists. They hurt people for information and money and the executed them once they were done. These people were animals.

Gibbs and McGee were upstairs caught in a firefight. They had ducked for cover and Gibbs had ordered him to move on. He had shut the door behind him and prayed for their lives. He was not religious, but this called for desperate measures. He scanned the room after the guard in the cell fell and found what he was looking for.

He saw Ziva look at him. Her eyes were unclear and he doubted that she could see him. Her body was covered with bruises and cuts, and her face was swollen. He opened his mouth to say something when she closed her eyes.

He ran to her and checked her pulse. Her heartbeat was there and he sighed. She had probably fainted and that was all. He noticed the blood pooling on the ground and reasoned that it was most likely blood loss. He felt relieved when he didn't notice any life threatening injuries.

Tony inspected the ropes that bound her to the wood and tried to untie the knot. He cut the ropes with a knife and was glad that Gibbs had invented rule number 9; Always carry a knive. He wouldn't have had one otherwise.

He was careful when he removed the ropes, especially because her ankle was bent awkwardly. It was most likely painful, and he didn't want her to wake up. It was better if she didn't see what was left of her prison.

He was ready to lift her up when the hot sunlight made something catch his eye. He grabbed Ziva's necklace and admired the star for a second when he noticed that it was broken. He put it in his pocket and held Ziva in his arms.

He tried to avoid the painful injuries and focused on getting out of there. He took one last look at the chair before he shut the door with his foot.

The NCIS agent knew that all the guards down here were dead and was not cautious when he ran through the small building with the Israeli beauty in his arms. He stopped before the door that hid the firefights outside. This was where he'd left Gibbs and Tim behind. He pressed his ear against the steel, but it was silent.

He opened the door, ready to close it as soon as he heard something, and looked. There were no guns firing bullets and he saw bodies on the sand. He saw helicopters searching the place for survivors and trucks were being loaded with prisoners. A tent had been set up for the wounded and he brought his partner to one of the tables.

A doctor approached them and he asked Tony for details. Tony told him everything he could and held her hand during the whole time.

Gibbs and McGee joined him and both breathed a sigh of relieve when they noticed their missing team member on the table.

"How is she," McGee asked him.

"She fainted from the blood loss and she is dehydrated. Her pulse is getting weaker and they're preparing her for a trip to the hospital. "

"The mission was a success. The prisoners are on their way to interrogation rooms and they are counting the dead as we speak." McGee informed them.

Gibbs merely looked at Ziva. He wanted her to realise that she could trust them, but that plan had failed almost immediately. He'd made sure that he knew where she was at all times, and he had known something was wrong when she disappeared from his sight a mere week later.

The man had told Abby to hack Mossad's mainframe and was told that she'd been keeping tabs on their friend's location. She'd hacked the system days ago and knew where Ziva was heading. They didn't know how she planned to get there, but she'd disappeared when she was almost there. They knew right away that she'd been taken prisoner and started to make their escape plan. Their cases had been transferred to the other teams and they'd taken off right away.

He hoped that she trusted him now. He needed her to trust someone, to talk to someone. He wanted her to talk to him, but he needed to get her to a hospital first.

Ziva didn't regain consciousness on her way to the nearest medical institution and they were glad that she didn't.

They discovered a stab wound in her side and three of her ribs looked broken. Tony had already told them about her ankle, but he'd missed the most likely broken left arm and the fractured fingers.

Her pulse was getting weaker and they'd discovered signs of shock. The men were worried and they kept glancing at her. Meanwhile, Gibbs briefed the director and got his own news. He wasn't going to call Mossad until they found out what happened. He didn't want Eli to take her before they got a real raport.

They were the ones that saved her and that gave them the right to take care of her until she woke up.


	3. Waking up

**A/N I started this story two years ago, right after Aliyah. My plot will mostly stay the same, but I will use some of the facts that we get in the next season. I want to make the story more realistic and keep the team in character. I hope that I'll succeed. **

The three members of the team were waiting in a separate room when Gibbs called a doctor. The man was ready to tell the agent that Ziva was still in surgery, but was silent when Gibbs pointed to his senior field agent.

His chair was stained red and DiNozzo looked like he was about to faint. The agent had been shot in his side and he hadn't even noticed. The hit agent was shipped to another room immediately and he was getting stitches while protesting vehemently.

Instead of lying down on the bed as suggested, he rushed back to the waiting room and was just on time to talk to the surgeon that was treating his partner.

"She's stable for now." Tony sighed. Ziva was safe.

"Her left arm is in a cast and I taped her ankle. She can walk with it, but I advise her not to strain it too much. This could damage her ankle permanently if she twists it again. Her ribs are bruised and she has one with a hairline fracture. I bandaged her and she should be able to fully heal within two months. She has to be careful. I also recommend that she sees a psychiatrist. She has suffered three full days of torture, it is possible that she will suffer from Posttraumatic stress disorder. "

Tony and Gibbs refrained from rolling their eyes at the man. None of them would ever voluntarily visit a mind reader.

"Miss David has to stay in the hospital for the weekend, but she will have to stay in bed when she gets home. She has to stay in a sterile room this weekend so she can't get infected. She's already on antibiotics, but I want to be sure. I can't rule them out with her numerous wounds.

Tony faced the nurse to ask if they could see her. The woman was pretty scared of the glares that she was receiving, so she decided to ignore visiting hours and let these three angry men have their way.

"It is after visiting hours, but I will make an exception. You can stay there as long as you want to, sirs."

Ziva was awake but she pretented to be asleep. She was not ready to face these agents, her friends. She had betrayed them, and she realised that now. They had given her a second chance, Gibbs had even given her a third one. She had been to blind to see that. How could she have even thought for a second that Gibbs would choose her over Tony. He had always been cautious around her, just like she'd been around him.

When she'd heard their voices, she thought she was dreaming. That she'd once again fallen asleep on the chair and hallucinated. It wouldn't have been the first time she did under torture.

When she finally realised that it was not a dream but reality, she listened carefully. Were they mad at her? Why were they here? Where was she?

She was listening to their reports of the rescue and got answers to two of her three main questions. She was touched that they'd come for her while only two men should know where she was.

She thougt that it was time to let them know she was awake. She pretended to wake up slowly and blinked. She groaned when she tried to sit up, which was not an act, she was hurting.

Gibbs, McGee and Tony all looked up from their reports. They threw the paper to the ground and immediately started asking her questions.

Ziva tried to speak, but the pain was too much so she let them ramble. Well, Tony and Tim were, Gibbs just stood next to her bed, waiting for his turn.

While McGee told her how they found her, how much they had missed her and that Abby couldn't wait for here to come home, she looked at Gibbs and Tony.

Gibbs had taken Tony aside while McGee was filling her in. They were arguing about something, but she couldn't hear what they were saying.

Tony listened to Gibbs carefully. He had no time for mistakes right now. He was talking about her. Ziva was in trouble, a lot of trouble.

She had made enemies, and he was sure that. Enemies in Israel where piling up. Gibbs doubted on which side the woman's father was. Tony did too. The man had tried to create a weapon, but he thanked god that the director hadn't succeeded.

She would need a place to hide for a while, and Tony immediately pointed out that Ziva wouldn't even consider it.

Gibbs hadn't pulled him aside for this conversation, though. He knew that the trust between the two agents had been damaged, broken actually. The bond they had hadn't had time to crack, it had been split in two the moment that Ziva didn't give her partner all the information she possessed about Rivkin.

"Tony …," Gibbs started.

Tony interrupted.

"I don't want to talk about it, Boss."

Gibbs gave him a head-slap and walked to Ziva, knowing that there was no point in pushing the agent. He had no way of helping them. There was nothing he could give Tony that would help him. DiNozzo would come up with his own plan. He had a method that worked for him most of the time, and Gibbs knew that he should not try to push the friendship, especially because his own bond with Ziva hadn't been restored yet.

Tony followed him and tried to find the words for the upcoming conversation.

Gibbs saw it right away when Tony made eye-contact with Ziva and took McGee with him to the cafeteria downstairs. He was in need of coffee.

**A/N I'll try to update again next week, but nothing is certain. I'll be celebrating my birthday and go to Harry Potter and the DH. I have plans for this weekend and My grandmother was born one day (and a couple of years) before I was. I hope you enjoyed and that I'll be able to read some reviews. Criticism or praise, like or dislike. I hope you enjoyed the chapter! **


	4. Puppet

They looked at each other for a full minute, and even then, kept their silence. Ziva herself did not know what to say.

This man had killed Michael, he had gone behind her back. She'd had her doubts about her Mossad colleague ever since he came to visit her in DC. The officer had been involved with her before, but he had never visited prior to this. She had suppressed the urge to ask him if he was on a mission when he arrived in the USA.

Ziva had played along. She snooped around his stuff, she asked him subtle questions and played him until he was just a puppet to her. She knew that he was not there for her, he would never be. She was a gullible girl that happened to be a Mossad operative because her father was its director. At least, she was that to him.

He probably never figured out that she was playing him. That she was one of the best at what she did. She out-ranked him in practically every way, and he thought (like many others) that it was her father's position in the agency that allowed her to be where she was. It was, partially. She had been trained to do what she did ever since she could walk.

Ziva had that advantage. She never had a proper childhood. The woman didn't care about her victims, her targets. She couldn't sympathize, because she knew they didn't deserve any.

Her time at NCIS hadn't been what changed her, contrary to popular believe. It had been Ari.

Family was important to her mother. They would have family meals, go on trips together and watch a movie when her siblings wanted to. When her mother and Tali died, she was hell-bent on revenge. She wanted to kill everyone, everyone. She hunted down the cell that was responsible for Tali's death and the people who killed her mother.

The family trips faded slowly because her loving mother was dead. Tali was no longer there to lighten everyone up and her father was busy with the agency. Ari went somewhere on a case to be away from everything that happened and left her practically alone in the process.

Ziva did nothing but work after that. Her father was proud of what his daughter was doing, and that was all that mattered.

Ari returned months later. He changed, and she knew that something was wrong. He ignored her and waved away her questions. She was no longer important.

When Ari was going to DC, she volunteered to go with him. She knew that he was innocent. The Ari she knew would never kill people that hadn't done anything wrong, innocents. She also took it because it allowed her to be in a close vicinity. They grew close again in those very few weeks and she was ready to take him back home.

That is when she saw the truth, and that was what changed the assassin. She got no closure, and she never would. The blood pooling on the floor had kept her awake day and night. The look on his face.

She felt like she betrayed her brother that day, and he still haunted her nightmares. Always nightmares, her dreams didn't exist.

That was why she came to work at NCIS. She wanted to know why she killed her brother for a man she barely knew. The last member of her family she cared for. Gibbs is a mystery that she'll never solve, but she got her answer. When she didn't like it, she stayed in Israel.

And when she met Saleem, she knew that she should've liked the answer. She belonged there. Israel was no longer home to her.

Not with Gibbs, Tony, Tim, Abby, Palmer and Ducky to wait for her. She knew that now.

What she didn't know, is why she was this mad about Rivkin's death. She had been planning to eliminate him that same week. He had been her source of information. Once she knew everything she wanted to, he was useless.

She had no reason to be mad at the special agent that stood by her hospital bed. No reason at all.

"I'm not here to apologize. I believe that I was right when I went to your apartment that night, Ziva."

**A/N It's been a busy two weeks for me. I've celebrated my birthday, and that of my grandmother. I've watched the Harry Potter marathon (part 1 & 2) on 12th of July (nice birthday present, don't ya think) and went again this Saturday and today. As you can tell, I've been busy. **

** I don't know where A mission is heading yet, because I've decided to alter the original story. I liked the plot, but it was to far-fetched. So, now that I don't know what the actual ending is going to be, this will be a lt slower and I'll probably won't update every week like I did. I hope you enjoyed the chapter and thank you for the reviews, I hope they are the first of many.**


	5. Apology

**A/N This is probably the shortest chapter I'll write, but I'm going to Greece so I won't update for a couple of weeks and I wanted you to have something to read while I'm gone. It was a perfect end (I think) So I don't know whether I'll write more. I'll have to change the title and summary, but it's possible. What do you think?**

Ziva looked him in the eye when he spoke those words, and they didn't even hurt. He'd done exactly what she would've done in his position. He did the right thing, simple as that.

She was the one that had to apologize, it was her turn to admit she made a mistake.

"I'm," she started, but was interrupted.

"You did what was right just as I did. There is no apology needed between the two of us."

"Tony.." Ziva pleaded. She felt that she owed him that apology.

"You kept the information, vital information, to yourself. I went behind your back and tried to arrest Rivkin. You asked Gibbs to transfer me to another team, and practically forced him to choose between you and me."

"I knew you were watching during my talk with Eli. I asked those questions just to end up at his 'always'. I tried to kick him, but I realised to late that I hit you even harder."

"I made you doubt yourself when Eli fell into my trap. I baited you. I forced you to confront me. You stayed behind when you were welcome to come with us. We can lay the blame on our own shoulders and those of others, but it doesn't matter. It won't change anything, Ziva."

"So, what is this? The end?" Ziva asked sadly, but with her face as blank as she could keep it. She remembered their first meeting, the night when he was stalking her, the movie nights. The beginning that had shaped their partnership. Then she remembered the SECNAV conference with LA, the elevator, her apartment, his blood, the plane, Israel. The events that had torn them apart. They had arrived at the end of the line, and there was nothing she could do to stop him. She was no NCIS agent, she could not legally live in America when she had nothing there.

Tony looked at her and put his hand in his pocket. He looked at her, calculating, like only he could. He was serious when he told her, after contemplating the different outcomes of his answer. His hand found its way to hers and she felt something cold in her hand. She looked at her necklace with the star of David while she contemplated his parting words before he departed.

"No, Ziva, this is the beginning."


End file.
